


Content

by oldmythologies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Also kind of, Angst, Gen, Memory, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, idk - Freeform, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 09:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12033447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmythologies/pseuds/oldmythologies
Summary: Lance sees the scars on Shiro's back.





	Content

Lance _knew_ he had scars. Shiro had one in the middle of his face, of _course_ he had scars.

It was different to see them.

Before it had just been an abstract concept. “Scars.” Okay, scars. Whatever.

It was different to see them.

It was obvious that Shiro thought he was alone, his eyes closed, head pillowed on his crossed arms as he let the rest of his body soak in the hot, vaguely glowing water.

His back was entirely exposed to Lance, and for the first time, Lance saw more skin than just his face, the back of his neck, and his left hand.

It wasn’t what he’d imagined. They weren’t pretty pink zebra stripes, little accents that made his eyes pop. They were ugly. They twisted his skin up, like the Indian rug burns he remembered giving his siblings. They were things healed wrong, mismatched fissures that tried to seal themselves back together and pulled everything in the wrong direction.

Shiro wasn’t supposed to look like that. Lance remembered Shiro. Shiro was a marble statue, every single muscle carefully chipped out of the Earth by God himself. He was beautiful, but _this—_

Lance couldn’t keep his eyes still as his brain tried to take everything in.

_Stop looking_ , he told himself. _Shiro would hate this_.

Shiro’s back rose and feel with his sigh. He was content. God, he was _content_. His muscles were slack beneath the twisted skin. For the first time Lance could remember, Shiro was relaxed.

He wondered how much the scars had to do with the way the strings that held his jaw in place pulled so hard they looked like they’d snap.

And then his eyes were back, trying to piece together the history written in those lines. That was obviously a bite, a scratch… was that a stab wound?

Lance blinked away the fog in his eyes and shivered with the tears that fell from them. When did he start crying?

Next to the stab was a long slash, and then a phaser blast, and there, right in the middle, taking up far too much of his back, stripes. Pretty and pink. The X’s crossed over each other, back and forth, a latticework weaving of stark marks that puffed up the skin.

Shiro shifted and sighed again, rolling his shoulders back but keeping his eyes closed. The scars moved with him, rolling with his shoulders, turning as he twisted his hips to stretch his legs.

They had become a part of him.

Those—

Lance didn’t even want to think it. He knew what those marks were, and he could almost see Shiro, kind Shiro, _gentle_ Shiro, his hands—there were two of them, then—tied in front of him as he tried not to cry.

Someone counted in an alien tongue. Shiro didn’t even know what number they were going for. He just knew that they kept _going_. Strike after strike, the crack echoing in his ears every single time. Every single time as they counted, a monotony that rubbed up on his ears, a foreign sound that taunted him.

They wanted him to scream.

He refused to scream.

Lance choked on the sound that threatened to escape his itching throat.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _fair_. Shiro had always been a nice guy. He was a _nice guy_.

Lance bit down on his lip.

It hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as a whip must have. He kept biting.

Shiro turned his head on his arms and Lance tiptoed backwards, fingernails digging into his palms. but it didn’t hurt as much as a whip must have. He kept digging. He winced when the doors slid back open, but Shiro was so god damn _content_ that he didn’t even notice.

They closed in front of him and Lance sucked in more air than his lungs could hold, coughing it back out as he stumbled to the nearest wall.

He forced his eyes shut, begged the stinging to stop.

It wasn’t _fair_.

He couldn’t stop picturing all the ways it could have happened, the sounds of Shiro’s scream bouncing off the walls of his brain.

Shiro was there, just feet away, and he was _content_. Somehow, that made it worse.

Lance wanted to hit someone. He wanted to find Zarkon or Sendak or Haggar or whoever the hell held the whip in their claws, whose voice had grated against his brain, and punch them in their dumb bitch ass teeth.

He tasted blood.

But Shiro was content, sighing to himself in a magical hot tub. He was content.

The scars probably still hurt, still pulled at his skin, but maybe this was recovery. Lance let go of his lip and wiped his face, pulling his shoulders back.

Recovery.

It was all they had left.


End file.
